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Monday, 14 May 2018

The Bible Predicted the Opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

The Bible
Predicted the Opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

The May 14 celebrations
surrounding the opening of the United State Embassy was predicted in the Jewish
Bible, the Old Testament.

Both the circumstance and the
location are mentioned in Jeremiah 32:42-44.

Following the awful prediction of
the fate of the Jews that they were to suffer the loss of sovereignty in their
land and suffer unspeakable degradation in exile, the prophet Jeremiah quoted
G-d as saying “As I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so
I will give them all the prosperity I promised them. Fields will flourish and
be bought again in this land which you describe as a desolate waste without
people or animals.”

Following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews from their ancient land, the wandering Jew endured hate,
injury, punishment, and death wherever they roamed in exile seeking shelter and
sanctuary from persecution.

Even less than a century before the Holocaust,
visitors to Palestine, a backwater of the fading Ottoman Empire, but attracted
by the spiritual quotations of the Bible, reported that it was a place devoid
of people and prosperity. In 1867, Mark Twain called the place, “A silent
mournful expanse. A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with
the pomp of life and action. We never saw a human being the whole route. There
was hardly a tree of a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the shrub, those fast
friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

But Jeremiah quoted G-d’s prediction
in powerful words that have a profound truth today, “Thus says the God of
Israel. I will gather them out of all the countries and I will bring them again
to this place. And I will cause them to dwell safely. And they shall be My
people, and I shall be their God. And I will give them one heart, and one way,
that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and the good of their
children. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not
turn away from them. I will rejoice over them and do them good, and I will
plant them in this land assuredly with My whole heart and with My whole soul.
For I say, like I brought upon them all this great evil, so will I bring on
them all the good that I have promised them.”

Then, predicting the location,
Jeremiah writes, “Fields shall be bought in this land. Men shall buy the fields
for money and subscribe evidence, and seal them and take witness (hence the
ceremonial opening of the US Embassy), in the land of Benjamin and in the places
around Jerusalem.”

The map of the tribe of Benjamin
in centered on Jerusalem.

It is no coincidence that Jimmy Morales, the
President of Guatemala will be in another part of Jerusalem on May 17 to
officially open his countries embassy in what was the land of Benjamin.

Also this month, President Horatio Carter will
inaugurate the new Embassy of Paraguay later this month.

All display the realization of
Jeremiah’s prophecies made more than two millennia ago as Israel and Jews have
stood steadfast to the notion of Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish
people through pain, suffering, and triumph.

It should also be noted that it
was on May 14, exactly seventy years ago, that, against enormous opposition,
President Harry Truman defied his political rivals, including many in his own
party, by signing off on the following statement.” This government has been
informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine. The United
States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the
new State of Israel.”

David Ben Gurion recorded that
when he met Truman at a New York hotel in 1961 to tell him of his immortal
place in Jewish history the former president broke into tears.Ben Gurion wrote of this incident, “I had
rarely seen anyone so moved. I tried to hold him for a few minutes until he became
more composed. A little while later, after we left, a reporter came to me to ask,
‘why was President Truman in tears when he left you?’”

Standing in solidarity with
Israel and the Jewish people has an awesome effect on a major world leader and,
in becoming the first world leader to officially declare Jerusalem as the capital
of the Jewish State of Israel, Donald J. Trump became the most consequential
American president since Harry Truman.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘1917. From Palestine to the
Land of Israel’ and ‘Sarah’s Story. A Tale of Love and Destiny,’
both available on Amazon and at Steimatzky bookstores in Israel.

He is also the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the
Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.